]]>OTTAWA – Liberal MP Joyce Murray is apologizing for a newspaper advertisement in which she appears to be feeding racial stereotypes about aboriginal people.

But the newspaper, in turn, is apologizing to Murray for running the ad without noticing it contained offensive content that had been written, without the Vancouver MP’s knowledge, by one of its sales people.

The First Nations Drum, which bills itself as the country’s largest aboriginal newspaper, ran the ad about three weeks ago.

It features a photograph of a smiling Murray alongside a congratulatory message to all 2015 aboriginal high school graduates.

The message concludes with the slogan: “Sobriety, education and hard work lead to success.”

Murray says she was not aware of the ad and did not approve its content; nevertheless she is assuming full responsibility for it and offering her “most sincere apologies.”

“I would like to apologize unreservedly for the deeply offensive language in this advertisement,” Murray said in a statement posted Wednesday on her Facebook page.

But Rick Littlechild, the newspaper’s general manager, said Murray has nothing to apologize for.

“We are responsible for it so we’ll take the blame,” Littlechild said in an interview.

“She shouldn’t take any responsibility. I mean, we came up with the slogan, that wasn’t her. She had nothing to do with it.”

The paper sells ads based on themes — marking aboriginal day for instance, or congratulating aboriginal award winners or graduates. The text is written by its own sales team. Murray routinely buys three or four ads a year, Littlechild said, and there’s never been a problem before.

Littlechild is upset that the paper’s proof readers didn’t notice the slogan on the Murray ad, which can be construed as feeding stereotypes. The paper intends to print an apology next week.

But Littlechild said he’s even more upset that the controversy over the ad has rebounded on Murray, who he said has always been very supportive of aboriginal issues.

“This is the last person who would ever, ever deserve this,” he said.

“If it was anyone else but her, I might not feel this way. But her of all people, it just kills me.”

The paper’s explanation did not appease Aboriginal Affairs Minister Bernard Valcourt. A spokesperson for the minister, Andrea Richer, said Murray’s ad is “unacceptable and offensive and yet another example of why (Liberal Leader) Justin Trudeau and his team are just not ready to lead.”

Richer called on aboriginal leader Jody Wilson-Raybould, a star Liberal candidate in Vancouver, to condemn the ad.

During question period on Tuesday afternoon, Liberal MP Joyce Murray asked Jason Kenney, the brand-new minister of National Defence, to account for the fact that the department he is now in charge of had refused to comply with requests from the Parliament Budget Officer for information related to the mission in Iraq.

“Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives refused for four months to provide Canadians with any information at all about the cost of the Iraq mission, so I asked the Parliamentary Budget Officer for help. According to the PBO, they then illegally ‘refused all PBO requests for specific data on this mission,’ ” she said. “Yesterday, the minister added insult to this secrecy and deception by slapping down a single cost number—no detail, no analysis, just an end run of the PBO’s report released today. Does the minister not believe Canadians have the right to be respected and to have real cost information on this important mission?”

The government’s relative willingness to release information to the PBO—an office this government established—seems like a legitimate concern. But the Defence minister seemed uninterested in engaging with this particular matter.

“An important mission that the Liberal Party opposes, Mr. Speaker,” Kenney retorted. “This government committed from the beginning that we would release the costs in the appropriate and normal parliamentary method, which we have done. It will be tabled this week as part of the supplementary estimates C, $122 million is the incremental cost associated with operation IMPACT.”

The minister then sought to clarify for viewers what should actually be the focus of their attention. “The real issue is why the Liberal Party has turned its back on decades of responsible internationalism, and a party that used to stand for national security is now standing against our efforts to protect Canadians in opposing the genocidal terrorist organization, ISIL,” he said. “We are proud of what our men and women in uniform are doing to combat that organization.”

As good as it is to know that the government remains supportive of our troops, this issue of the government’s regard for the PBO should not be disappeared down the memory hole without at least a moment’s thought.

The story today might have otherwise been that the government’s costing and the PBO’s estimate were vaguely in line with each other. Unfortunately, the fourth paragraph of the PBO’s report reads as follows:

PBO made a number of information requests to the Department of National Defence (DND) to facilitate this analysis. While DND provided an up-to-date version of its Cost Factors Manual 2014-15, it refused all PBO requests for specific data on Operation IMPACT. Several of these refusals appear to breach DND’s legal obligations under the Parliament of Canada Act. Information that would have been helpful for PBO analysis was also denied to parliamentarians in the context of Order Paper questions. Much of the uncertainty in this report’s estimate of the cost of Operation IMACT arises from DND’s withholding of information.

In response, the Department of National Defence invokes the legal exemptions provided for what are known as cabinet confidences, that which the cabinet is allowed to keep to itself for the purposes of allowing “full and frank discussions” among ministers:

The Department of National Defence has, and will continue to provide the PBO with information that he needs to do his job, within the mandate Parliament has given him.

As per our correspondence with the PBO on December 23, 2014, some of the information requested was deemed to be Cabinet Confidence and could not be released at that time.

We remain committed to ensuring that Parliament is informed of the costs associated with the mission, which will continue to be reported through the usual parliamentary process.

On this assertion of cabinet confidence, the PBO wrote (pdf) to the deputy minister at Defence in November to argue that such an exemption should not apply. The deputy minister doesn’t seem to have engaged the PBO’s arguments in his response (pdf). The PBO is making very specific arguments about the applicability of cabinet confidence, and those arguments would seem to deserve direct answers.

At page seven of the PBO’s latest report, there is a summary of the office’s information requests, including this explanation and counterpoint:

PBO requested this information by October 31, 2014. On November 4, 2014, Lieutenant-General Jonathan Vance confirmed that the Canadian Joint Operations Command had provided the Government with “an estimate of [the cost of] operations over the course of six months.”12 DND has repeatedly refused to provide that estimate, claiming it as a Cabinet confidence.13 The estimate is not a Cabinet confidence because it provides the factual basis for a decision that has been made, and, regardless, PBO is entitled to the information contained in Cabinet confidences provided the information appears in any other document.

If there is a rebuttal to that, it’d be fun to hear it.

(Oddly enough, the Conservative party promised in 2006 that, if the Conservatives formed government, the information commissioner would be given the power to review claims of cabinet confidence.)

This latest dispute might be added to the discussion of how the parliamentary budget officer should be, or we could just all agree that we are better off with independent analysis and costing of government initiatives and legislation and that the parliamentary budget officer is a useful construct for acquiring such accountability. And that, in that regard, it is worrisome when the office’s requests for information are denied.

This particular dispute between the PBO and the government will no doubt be forgotten by next week, perhaps to be recalled in passing when this country’s mission in Iraq next becomes a matter of some debate. But the situation and future of the PBO is a live issue, whether we notice it or not—the PBO continuing on and the changes that might be made to further empower it unmade, unless and until Parliament decides otherwise.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/liberal-mp-joyce-murray-on-lockdown-in-centre-block/feed/0The Commons: The silly and the hallowedhttp://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/the-commons-the-silly-and-the-hallowed/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/the-commons-the-silly-and-the-hallowed/#commentsWed, 24 Apr 2013 22:28:51 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=376631An hour and a half in the life of the House of Commons

]]>At 2pm, the Speaker’s parade—a ceremonial photo op, a silly show of hallowed tradition—proceeded down the West corridor of Centre Block toward the House of Commons. Preceded by one marching guard and flanked by three more—To protect the Speaker from what? A sneak attack by the Queen?—strode the sergeant-at-arms, carrying the large golden mace that must be in place for the House to conduct its business, and the Speaker and his clerks in their three-cornered hat and robes. Once the official party was safely inside, the large wooden doors were shut and the official business of the nation began for another day.

***

Something like a dozen reporters had gathered at the gallery door, anxiously waiting for the House to be called to order. This was something like four times the usual attendance—the larger crowd here in anticipation that one of the duly elected adults sent here to represent the people of this country might stand up in his or her place without having first obtained the permission of the party leader he or she is supposed to support.

There was a statement, from Conservative MP Kevin Sorenson, about World Meningitis Day. NDP MP Don Davies stood to “to bring to Parliament’s attention three occasions of great importance to the Vietnamese Canadian community.” Conservative MP Jay Aspin then stood to lament both the NDP leader’s comments about “Dutch disease” and recent mischaracterizations of FedNor. “I believe that the only disease is the disease the NDP leader has perpetrated,” Mr. Aspin explained. “That is his own foot in his mouth disease.”

From the government lobby, Mark Warawa, having announced to reporters hours earlier that he might take the Speaker up on the invitation to stand and be recognized, shuffled in tentatively with the aid of a cane, apparently having recently suffered a back injury of some kind. He took his seat and was soon visited by Tom Lukiwski, the government’s deputy House leader. Some kind of consultation ensued.

Mr. Lukiwski continued on and Mr. Warawa sat and talked and laughed with his seatmates, Jeff Watson, Merv Tweed and Brad Trost. The House proceeded with the other MPs who were due to speak. Mr. Warawa looked at the Speaker, smiled and gave a thumbs-up. Mr. Watson mocked like he was going to stand up. The NDP’s Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet stood and pronounced shame on the government’s reforms to employment insurance. And then, at 2:17pm, the House now running a bit late and Ms. Boutin-Sweet not quite finished, Mr. Warawa got up. Mr. Watson, in possession of Mr. Warawa’s cane, pretended to give him the hook. Leon Benoit came up from his seat in the front row to take an empty seat behind Mr. Warawa. Mr. Tweed and James Bezan, also seated nearby, pretended like they might seek to be recognized too. But here now the Speaker called on the member for Langley, apparently unchallenged. The backbenchers around him applauded.

“Mr. Speaker,” Mr. Warawa said, seemingly now with the official permission of his party, “I am honoured to be able to tell this House about an incredible event happening in beautiful Langley, British Columbia. It is called ‘Langley has Talent.’ ”

Something like 60 seconds later, he was done. Various Conservatives stood to applaud him.

And that was basically that.

A few moments later, as the NDP’s Charmaine Borg—still barely removed from university, now hectoring the government over privacy breaches—stood, as scheduled, to ask the fifth question of the afternoon, Independent MP Bruce Hyer and Green MP Elizabeth May rose in their spots in the back corner. Ms. May stood up again as Joyce Murray led the Liberal questions. And then again as Ms. Murray asked her second question. And then again as Bob Rae stood to ask a question. And then again and again. Eventually she was joined by Liberal MP Denis Coderre. Though Mr. Coderre noticeably did not jump up when it was a fellow Liberal who was due to ask a question.

That the Speaker would recognize Ms. May or Mr. Coderre when an MP of another party was due to speak seems unlikely, perhaps even unfair—the questions are dispersed among the parties and the independent MPs on a proportional basis. But then perhaps someday some frustrated backbencher might follow their lead and stand when another member of their own side is due to speak and thus force the Speaker to make a choice. On this day, as the Speaker reached the 25th question, the spot lately reserved for the first question from a Conservative, there was no Conservative who stood to challenge Calgary Centre’s Joan Crockatt. And so Ms. Crockatt was, as scheduled, free to remind the House that the government was tremendously supportive of the Keystone XL pipeline and to ask the parliamentary secretary for natural resources to “update us on the latest developments on this important project” and Dave Anderson was thus free, as scheduled, to decry the “narrow, ideologically driven, anti-trade, anti-development, anti-resource, anti-job agenda” of the NDP.

The Speaker might have yesterday allowed for the possibility of procedural revolution, but for at least today the revolutionaries—seekers of their most fundamental right—were quiet.

***

Amid the rote, there was some life in this place this day.

Of recent mucking about with the danger pay allotted to member of the military stationed in various parts of Afghanistan, the New Democrats had first sent up Elaine Michaud. And Defence Minister Peter MacKay had dismissed her concerns.

“I would ask the member to demonstrate her support and perhaps explain to the House why she continually votes against things like pay increases, education funds for families of deceased members of the Canadian Forces and funding for our Commonwealth war graves,” Mr. MacKay had charged, looking over in Ms. Michaud’s direction. “We will take no lessons from members of the NDP who continually work and vote against the interests of the armed forces.”

That New Democrats have voted against Conservative legislation is something of a preoccupation for the Conservatives. If you voted against the budget, for instance, you voted against volunteer fighters. But a couple minutes, after Mr. MacKay had pronounced shame on the NDP’s Alexandre Boulerice over a six-year-old blog post about Vimy Ridge and the Conservatives had stood to applaud the minister’s effort, Jack Harris, the Newfoundland lawyer, had stood and wondered aloud if perhaps Mr. MacKay, as a member of the opposition, might have voted against military funding provided for in previous Liberal budget.

Mr. MacKay had been happy for the opportunity to mock. “Here is what we have,” he had said. “Now we have the defence critic for the NDP defending the abysmal record of the Liberal Party, a decade of darkness. He has his facts wrong on the history of the Liberal defence spending, just like his colleague from Quebec has the facts wrong on what happened at Vimy Ridge.”

Mr. MacKay had pointed this way and that and now he swiped his right hand. “The NDP is a joke on defence,” he had declared. The Conservatives, delighted, had stood to applaud and had called out for more.

“Mr. Speaker, it is always the same from the minister,” the NDP’s Jinny Sims had attempted to scold with the next opportunity, only to draw more applause from the Conservatives.

But now, later in the hour, it was Nathan Cullen on his feet. A bit too early in fact. Not, it seems, because he was attempting to join Ms. May and the standers, but because he had lost track of whose turn it was. When the Speaker called for Ralph Goodale, Mr. Cullen returned to his seat. A question and a response later, he was back up. And he was apparently prepared.

“Mr. Speaker, Canadians might be wondering what the Minister of National Defence’s record was on spending before he was the minister,” Mr. Cullen mused. “We went and checked. Lo and behold, it turns out he repeatedly voted against the military.”

“Woaahh!” mocked the New Democrats.

“No, no, it is true,” Mr. Cullen assured the disbelievers. “In 2004, he voted against $792 million for military operations in capital. He voted against $17 million for St. Anne’s (Veteran’s) Hospital.”

“Woaahh!” mocked the New Democrats.

“Against $600,000 for war veterans,” Mr. Cullen reported.

“Ohhh!” groaned the New Democrats.

“Can the minister not see through his own tortured logic,” Mr. Cullen wondered, looking over at Mr. MacKay, “so that he can finally admit that MPs can be opposed to his government’s agenda and still support Canada’s military?”

The New Democrats stood to applaud.

Mr. MacKay stood with a smile and stepped forward, nearly putting a foot out into the aisle. He proceeded to enthuse and gesture assuredly.

“Mr. Speaker, it is somewhat passing strange to hear members of the NDP defending the Liberal decade of darkness,” he mocked. “What I voted against, what many Conservatives, when we were in opposition, voted against was the unmitigated disaster that was the Liberal Party, the dismantling of the Canadian Forces. What we have seen as a government is unprecedented investment in the Canadian Forces, improved morale, new equipment, investments in bases and programs. This member and his party have been against all of those.”

The Conservatives stood to applaud.

Mr. Cullen returned to his feet.

“Mr. Speaker, his answer to the decade of darkness was to cut danger pay to our troops in Afghanistan. Fascinating,” the NDP House leader shot back.

The New Democrats applauded. Mr. Cullen returned to his piece of paper.

“He also voted against $6.3 million for a Canadian Forces health information system, against $2 million to upgrade Goose Bay’s airfield, against $22 million for disability pensions, and he voted against $49 million for public security and anti-terrorism measures,” he recounted.

“Woaahh!” mocked the New Democrats.

“I could do this all day, but I will allow the minister one more opportunity. He must now understand that we can hold government to account,” Mr. Cullen concluded jabbing the air in the general direction of the government, “vote against their bad budgets, and support our brave men and women.”

Up came the New Democrats to cheer once more.

Mr. Cullen slammed the paper on his desk as he returned to his seat. Mr. MacKay stood and leaned forward, placing his right hand on his own desk and his left hand on the adjacent desk. The minister stared at Mr. Cullen. Mr. Cullen stared at the minister, stern-faced and nodding.

Mr. MacKay straightened up and began his response.

“Mr. Speaker, let me get this straight,” he said, putting his hands together and then furrowing his brow. “This member is now suggesting that because, while in opposition, this NDP government—”

The New Democrats stood and cheered at their apparent promotion. Mr. Cullen shook Mr. Mulcair’s hand and Mr. Mulcair pretended to be quite honoured.

The Speaker called for order and then returned the floor to the minister.

“While in opposition, while they are continuing to oppose these unprecedented investments in the Canadian Forces, somehow this justifies the New Democrats’ ongoing resistance to investments in programs, in equipment, in personnel,” Mr. MacKay now offered, somewhat confusingly. “Somehow that twisted logic justifies their opposition to all of the wonderful things we have done for the Canadian Forces.”

The House moved on and 20 minutes later the time for questions had expired. Mr. MacKay stood then on a point of order. He sought, apparently, to continue via clarification the discussion between himself and Mr. Cullen. Members of the opposition side shouted him down with cries of “debate!”—a debatable matter not being, by the ancient rules of this place, a point of order and this not being the time reserved for debate. Mr. MacKay returned to his seat and he and Mr. Cullen looked at each other and laughed.

***

In the foyer afterwards, there was much scurrying about. Liberal House leader Dominic LeBlanc arrived at a microphone to pronounce shame on a Conservative mailout the Liberals had obtained (apparently courtesy of a mysterious brown envelope).

“We were obviously surprised to find out that the Conservatives are now using taxpayers’ money to produce and distribute some of the negative attack ads that, previously at least, they had the decency to allow the Conservative Party to pay for,” Mr. LeBlanc explained.

Unfortunately for Mr. LeBlanc, the New Democrats had already been round with a mailout sent in the name of Bob Rae that criticized NDP MP Craig Scott and his legislation to revoke and replace the Clarity Act. And now a reporter was presenting this to Mr. LeBlanc and now Mr. LeBlanc was having to try to explain the difference between what he was complaining about and what his party seemed to have done.

“Well, it’s negative on the irresponsible policy of the NDP,” Mr. LeBlanc offered, expertly using this awkward moment to at least lambaste the New Democrats. “The NDP irresponsible policy is that the country could be broken up on a 50% plus one vote on an unclear question. We find it extremely irresponsible, the substance of the NDP’s view on things like the Clarity Act and the eventual possibility of another referendum in Quebec. We didn’t run a negative household or attacking a person and the experience of Mr. Scott or Mr. Scott’s person.”

A Conservative aide came by with an old Liberal mailout attacking the Prime Minister. Nearby, the questions persisted and so did Mr. LeBlanc.

“If I had written a ten-percenter to say that why does Mr. Scott pretend to be an effective parliamentarian when he only worked perhaps as a camp counselor or when he may have taught bungee jumping or where he once went river rafting in the state of Maine, that would have been a personal attack on Mr. Scott,” Mr. LeBlanc clarified. “If an NDP MP believes and Mr. Scott, the NDP MP, was in fact the person who brought in that completely ridiculous NDP bill to substitute the Clarity Act for some watered down, weak-kneed approach of the NDP to placate the nationalists in their caucus, Mr. Scott should answer for the substance of his reckless and silly private member’s bill. I’m not interested in him answering line by line the summer jobs he had.”

Mr. LeBlanc was then asked if perhaps some rule had been broken.

“Well, if there’s no rule that says you shouldn’t use taxpayers’ resources to distribute partisan attack ads, then we need to change the rules,” Mr. LeBlanc posited. “It’s pretty clear to us that the Conservatives were caught today by a distribution error in trying to use potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayers’ money to distribute a completely ridiculous attack ad where they show pictures of our leader, deliberately intended to be an unflattering silly attack ad and then are nice enough to include a series of rather silly texts that they can insert, cut and paste, to meet the House of Commons rules. So if you’re asking me is it the right thing to do to waste taxpayers’ money on partisan attack ads, the answer surely is no.”

An hour and a half after the Speaker’s parade had summoned the tradition and the generational responsibility that binds this place together, here was something timeless. Here were the timeless qualities that have filled the air between these walls for decades and will, with any luck, for centuries to come: outrage, scorn, contradiction, belief and principle.

]]>Yesterday afternoon, Liberal Senator Celine Hervieux-Payette apparently sent out a tweet suggesting that an alignment with U.S. policy would somehow draw the interest of terrorists.

On that basis, the Conservative party is now appealing for funds to help spread the word of Justin Trudeau’s unfitness for office.

Yesterday, the RCMP announced they had foiled a potential terrorist attack here in Canada – and Justin Trudeau’s Liberal team thought it was a good idea to use the moment to score cheap political points against our Conservative government.

I guess now we know what Trudeau meant when, instead of condemning the Boston bombers and calling for their swift punishment, he opined that we needed to look for “root causes” because terrorists are probably feeling “excluded.” Trudeau’s Liberals think Conservative policies are the real “root cause” of terrorism.

The media are deliberately ignoring this story to protect Justin Trudeau. We tried to get reporters interested, but the media would rather report on an NDP news release about Earth Day.

That’s why we need your help. We need to make sure every Canadian knows that Justin Trudeau lacks the judgement and experience to be Prime Minister.

He’s the most inexperienced leader of the Liberal Party in history – and it shows. Help us send a message to Justin Trudeau that his comments on terrorism are unacceptable.

Sincerely,

Jenni ByrneNational Campaign Manager, 2011

I’m not sure what evidence there is that the senator is Mr. Trudeau’s “senior Quebec advisor.” (I’ve asked Mr. Trudeau’s office for clarification.) She endorsed Joyce Murray in the Liberal leadership race.

Update 6:02pm. Liberal House leader Dominic LeBlanc was asked about this after QP today.

I actually don’t follow madame Hervieux-Payette’s comments on Twitter. My understanding is that a staff person has apologized for in fact having used her account to put on Twitter views that certainly are reflected by myself, by the Liberal caucus or by the Liberal leader. What’s interesting for us is that Mr. Harper probably holds the speed record in trying to exploit a tragedy like the Boston bombings for political advantage and this week he gets another prize for the record in terms of speed of trying to exploit for financial gain for his Conservative Party these tragic events. There’s no depth to which he won’t sink to try and collect money for the Conservative Party, sending a fund-raising letter with a series of falsehoods, that’s only one of them, there are others, but we’re not – we’re not particularly surprised or worried about that.

The scoffing term for what’s about to happen to Justin Trudeau, in case you haven’t picked up on it, is “coronation.” The implication being that the dauphin strolled unimpeded through the Liberal leadership race, which wraps up with presentations today in Toronto from Trudeau and his five remaining—well, I guess they are still to be called—rivals. (The online and telephone balloting by some 127,000 Liberal party members and supporters who signed up to vote runs April 7 to April 14, when the winner will be announced in Ottawa.)

Yet if a crown is to be placed, so to speak, on the most ogled head of hair in Canadian politics—the wavy antithesis of Stephen Harper’s helmet—it’s not like those locks haven’t been mussed a bit along the way. Trudeau’s frontrunner status may never have been threatened, but all his key purported weaknesses—thin experience, a cosseted upbringing, a brittle stance on Quebec, aversion to left-of-centre cooperation—were pointedly highlighted along the way.

At those moments, Conservatives and New Democrats were watching most closely, and so they are worth recapping for signs of whether these tests did more to expose Trudeau’s vulnerabilities or fortify his defences.

He hasn’t done or said much. This was the line of attack most aggressively pursued by Montréal MP Marc Garneau, the famous former astronaut who was widely seen as running a distant second until he dropped out on Feb. 13, declaring himself a man of science who accepted the data showing Trudeau to be unbeatable.

But before then, Garneau, who also successfully headed the Canadian Space Agency, repeatedly ripped Trudeau for having done nothing in his life to prepare himself for the job he was seeking. During his bluntest debate assault, Garneau demanded: “So please tell us what in your resume qualifies you to be the leader of the country.”

Trudeau, whose was a schoolteacher before entering politics, might have answered that he’d twice won a Montréal riding that is far from a safe Liberal seat. But his answer was more telling than that obvious rejoinder. “You can’t win over Canadians with a five-point plan,” he said. “You have to connect with them and we have to make room with Canadians in the debate that we have coming forward.”

So it’s not about platform or credentials for Trudeau and his crew. It’s about making an emotional connection with any voters who aren’t already emotionally committed to Harper. In other words, it’s about doing what the late Jack Layton did in 2011.

He’s a privileged guy with a famous name. No sane leadership contender would hint publicly at lack of regard for Pierre Trudeau, beloved Liberal icon, but Martha Hall Findlay took a rather reckless shot at the other aspect of Justin’s family background—wealth and privilege.

After all, Trudeau spent much of his campaign talking about the middle class, which he’s not. “I find it a little challenging,” Hall Findlay said in a memorable debate exchange in Mississauga, Ont., “to understand how you would understand the real challenges facing Canadians.”

Trudeau’s reply—”What is important for me is to put everything that I’ve received, like each of us wants to, in service of my community”—went over well with the Liberals in the room. But Harper, who has made much of his middle-income hockey-dad credentials, might well find a way to revive the theme. The danger for Trudeau is less being cast as a child of privilege than being accused of having not done much with it. That’s the link, when you think about it, between Garneau’s line of attack and Hall Findlay’s.

He doesn’t get contemporary Quebec. As a former justice minister from Jean Chrétien’s government, Martin Cauchon arguably has the most solid political credentials of all the Liberal leadership contenders. Yet Cauchon would barely have figured in the contest, had he not sparred with Trudeau on the delicate matter of Quebec and the Constitution.

He urges Liberals to consider a long-term strategy for somehow coaxing a future Quebec provincial government into signing the Constitution, as repatriated and amended by Pierre Trudeau in 1982, over the objections of a separatist regime in Quebec City. Cauchon calls Justin Trudeau’s emphatic rejection of any opening at all on the Constitution “empty” and “old-fashioned.”

Trudeau used his closing remarks at the leadership debate in Montreal to lash back.”For far too long we’ve tried to buy Quebec, to buy them off rather than to get them involved,” he said. His campaign strategists argue that Quebec voters are turned off by any mention of the constitution, including NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair’s approach, and so Trudeau’s stand is a potential winner.

But there’s a quite different undercurrent to Trudeau’s Quebec appeal that is in danger of being missed in all the attention given to the friction between he and Cauchon. The dominant political narrative in Quebec—from 2004’s Gomery commission into the so-called sponsorship scandal, to the ongoing Charbonneau commission hearings into construction industry corruption—has been about debased political ethics. Trudeau may be relatively inexperienced, but he’s also entirely untainted.

He denies the need for progressive cooperation. In a race that has rarely focused on fully-formed policy ideas, the Vancouver MP Joyce Murray’s proposal for left-of-centre cooperation in the next federal election has stood out for its bracing, divisive clarity. Murray calls for a temporary co-operation pact among Liberals, Greens and New Democrats—good for one election only—to beat Harper and then pass electoral reforms. (She urges moving toward away from Canada’s first-past-the-post voting system and toward proportional representation.)

Trudeau is having none of it. He criticizes Murray’s co-operation concept for its “single-minded focus, not on governing, but on winning, on taking away power from people we don’t like.” Recent polls giving Liberals hope they might win without resorting to alliances with the NDP and Greens must bolster his position.

But this debate is less about electoral calculations than about Trudeau’s assessment of congenital incompatibilities on the left of the Canadian political spectrum. In an interview last year with Maclean’s, he contrasted the unification of the right, as accomplished by Harper in 2003, and the notion of symmetrical coming together of Canadian progressives.

“The right didn’t unite so much as reunite,” Trudeau said. “I mean, Reform was very much a western movement breaking away from Brian Mulroney. But they broke away, then they came back together. The NDP and the Liberals come from very, very, very different traditions.”

For all his youth, his Twitter-era aura, his thin experience, it is when Trudeau evokes tradition that he might reveal the most about himself. He’s got some old-school qualities. They may never have really rattled him, but Garneau, Hall Findlay, Cauchon and Murray pressed hard enough to show that Trudeau could run a traditional, risk-averse front-runner’s race.

]]>Elizabeth May announces that the Greens will not field a candidate in the Labrador by-election.

Elizabeth May announced today that the Green Party of Canada has decided not to field a candidate in the upcoming Labrador by-election and challenged the NDP to do the same…

The Federal Council of the Green Party of Canada has made the decision to step out ahead of nominating meetings of other parties to call for cooperation in Labrador. Peyton Barrett, Campaign Manager for George Barrett, the Green Candidate in the 2011 election, concurred, “At the grassroots level, we agree that cooperation can work in exceptional circumstances and when it is in the best interest of voters.”

This is what Ms. May suggested the Greens would do if a by-election had been called in Etobicoke Centre as a result of the dispute between Ted Opitz and Borys Wrzesnewskyj. As I noted at the time, there’s not really any precedent for such a move.

Via Twitter, Ms. May says the Labrador Greens wanted to do this and, as in Etobicoke Centre, points to questions about the integrity of the election as a reason for doing so. She also says she offered “cooperation” in the Calgary and Victoria by-elections.

The Greens took 1.3% of the vote in Labrador in 2011 (although, if those votes had gone to Liberal Todd Russell, he’d still be the MP right now).

Update 1:54pm. In a release from her Liberal leadership campaign, Joyce Murray says she approached Ms. May and proposed the idea.

“When news broke that a by-election was imminent following the resignation of Peter Penashue, the Harper Conservative MP forced to resign last week due to an election financing scandal, and in light of the 2011 results in Labrador and Stephen Harper’s attempt to stack the deck in Penashue’s favour, I called Green Party Leader Elizabeth May and asked her to consider having the Green Party EDA not run a candidate when the by-election is called. She immediately agreed to discuss the unique circumstances of this riding with the Green Party’s Executive Council and today we see the result: the Green Party has announced that it will not run a candidate in the Labrador by-election,” said MP Murray. “I am solidly on the record supporting local level electoral cooperation to elect progressives and defeat the Harper Conservatives. In this instance it is abundantly clear that the progressive candidate with the greatest ability to do that would be the Liberal candidate and not the Green Party candidate.”

First choice on my ballot will be Joyce Murray, MP for Vancouver Quadra. A party leadership race is a critical moment that determines the direction that a party takes for many years. A vote for Joyce calls on the Liberal Party to put sustainability — an honest accounting of the fiscal, environmental, and social assets and liabilities we pass on to our children — at the forefront of our party’s identity. A vote for Joyce also expresses support for cooperation between the progressive political parties in the 2015 election as a strategy to avert another Conservative victory. As 2015 rolls around, I think that exploring possibilities for cooperation will be very important for the good of the country, and completely compatible with first building up the Liberal Party’s own organization and identity.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/ted-hsu-now-supports-joyce-murray/feed/7Cooperative math is complicatedhttp://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/cooperative-math-is-complicated/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/cooperative-math-is-complicated/#commentsMon, 11 Mar 2013 16:27:15 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=359164Uniting the left is still harder than it sounds

]]>Paul Adams wonders what it would take for the New Democrats and Liberals to consider a merger. Greg Fingas notes a wrinkle in Joyce Murray’s cooperation proposal: Ms. Murray wants to combine the 2008 and 2011 election results for the purposes of figuring out where to cooperate, in part so that an “anomaly” like the NDP’s result in Quebec in 2011 can be accounted for.

Now, one of the main criticisms of strategic voting schemes has been their inevitable reliance on re-fighting the last war – with results ranging from ineffective to downright counterproductive. But Murray apparently isn’t satisfied with even that well-established level of failure. Instead, she’s going a step further into the past, seeking to incorporate yet another layer of past (and outdated) data from the 2008 election in order to try to make her proposal palatable among supporters who apparently want to live in denial that the most recent federal election actually happened.

Moreover, she’s explicitly declaring that a plan nominally aimed at expanding the number of progressive seats in Parliament will operate on the assumption that the largest actual grouping of such seats is an irrelevant “anomaly”. (Not that the NDP’s success in winning Quebec ridings from the Cons and Bloc would be subject to her cooperation plan in the first place – as in another familiar failing of strategic voting schemes, Murray doesn’t seem to recognize that a viable coalition needs to hold and build on the seats it actually holds rather than simply assuming the rest of the election will proceed exactly like the previous one.)

Mr. Speaker, in 2011 most voters did not get what they voted for. Whether they favoured Greens, NDP or Liberals, they often received a Conservative MP due to our undemocratic voting system. Most of the world’s democracies have some kind of proportional representation. If we had fair elections, then Conservatives would have only 122 seats, the NDP 96, the Liberals 58 and the Greens would have at least a dozen. Canadians would have the Parliament they voted for, most likely a NDP-Liberal-Green government.

Only one of the candidates running for the Liberal leadership has a real plan for electoral reform, putting democracy before party politics. I hope that Canadians will seriously consider the ideas of the member for Vancouver Quadra and that other candidates will also put their country before personal and political ambitions.

Conceivably Mr. Hyer could sign up as a Liberal supporter and cast a vote for Ms. Murray.

Update 5:54pm. Mr. Hyer tells me he doesn’t plan on voting in the Liberal leadership race and prefers to maintain his independence.

]]>Yesterday, Judy Sgro became the 19th Liberal MP to endorse Justin Trudeau. This afternoon, Joyce Murray has announced the endorsement of David Suzuki.

Mr. Suzuki’s endorsement seems mostly to do with Ms. Murray’s positions on sustainability and the environment, but he also mentions her plan for electoral co-operation.

It’s possibly important to note that Ms. Murray’s plan for electoral cooperation and democratic reform is a bit different than Elizabeth May’s plan for electoral cooperation and democratic reform. Ms. Murray would have the Liberals, New Democrats and Greens cooperate to defeat the Conservatives and, as Liberal leader, she would explore changes to our current electoral system. Ms. May would have the Liberals, New Democrats and Greens cooperate for the expressed purpose of changing the electoral system: a Liberal-NDP-Green government would exist specifically and only to change the system and then, once that was accomplished, a new election would be called.

I find Ms. Murray’s plan problematic, but at least it’s less problematic than Ms. May’s plan (otherwise known as the Coyne plan), as I explained at some length last month.

]]>The Liberals are holding their leadership debate (or, rather, their first series of “Davos-style” conversations with the candidates) in Winnipeg this afternoon. Each of the contenders will sit down for an 11-minute conversation with Harvey Locke, the Liberal candidate in last year’s Calgary Centre by-election.

You can stream the proceedings here. We’ll start the live blog shortly (hit refresh for the latest update).

2:00pm. So, again, this is “Davos-style,” only without all the powerful and influential people that make Davos interesting. At least Winnipeg is a more interesting place than Switzerland.

2:03pm. First up is Karen McCrimmon. First question from Mr. Locke isn’t actually a question: “Please tell us a personal insight that you’d like Canadians to have about you.”

2:05pm. Second question: There is a perception that we’re an urban party beyond the Maritimes, should we do more to attract rural voters? Tough one. Ms. McCrimmon goes with “absolutely.”

2:10pm. There now seems to be some kind of disruption. Someone is banging on a drum and shouting.

2:11pm. Mr. Locke and Ms. McCrimmon are attempting to talk over the noise. Apparently the disruption, now concluded, was related to Idle No More.

2:14pm. Next up, Marc Garneau. He likes to do household chores, particularly vacuuming.

2:18pm. Adam Goldenberg argues this format is valuable because a party leader will do many one-on-one interviews. Perhaps. But these seem to be the easiest interviews a politician will ever do. If this is a test, it’s a pretty basic test.

2:24pm. If the challenge is basically surface-level: looking and sounding the part, Mr. Garneau did fairly well there. Looks and sounds like an experienced politician.

2:30pm. Joyce Murray might make a good environment minister in a Liberal government.

2:32pm. I hope one of the candidates answers one of Locke’s questions with “no comment.”

2:34pm. Ms. Murray busts Mr. Locke for being too long-winded in this questions. That will be the sharpest exchange of the afternoon. Suggested headline: “Murray lands knockout punch on Locke”

2:36pm. Justin Trudeau goes with the “no jacket/rolled up sleeves” look. Very Jack Layton. Asked for a personal anecdote, he says he misses his children. Boom. That is how you do politics. And then, somehow, he segues from that into a comment on the young people in Idle No More and an acknowledgement of the protester. Double Boom.

2:38pm. Mr. Trudeau launches into a defence of supply management, which serves as a swipe at Martha Hall Findlay.

2:41pm. Thinking back on Mr. Trudeau’s opening remarks, he probably missed an obvious opening to sing the first verse of the Greatest Love of All. Bit of a mistake. But he’ll learn not to let those opportunities go missed.

2:46pm. Mr. Trudeau explains that he has been to Sweden and that Canada needs its own Ikea (I’m paraphrasing). So there’s Scott Feschuk’s next column.

2:48pm. Deborah Coyne’s personal anecdote is that it’s Groundhog Day and she loves the movie, Groundhog Day, and that the movie is sort of an analogy for the Liberal party’s present challenge. Idea alert: What the Liberal party needs is Bill Murray.

2:59pm. David Bertschi comes out wearing a Liberal party scarf. In case there was some doubt about which party he supports.

3:04pm. The professionalization of politics is a touchy subject and it’s problematic to argue against political participation: But can we have a Davos-style conversation about who should be running for leader of a political party? If you’ve never held political office, how well can you hope to lead a party in a parliamentary system? Set aside the question of finding a seat to win so that you can sit in the House (Jean Chretien, Stephen Harper and Jack Layton didn’t have seats when they became party leaders). What evidence is there that individuals who’ve never been elected can win a party leadership and then succeed in that role? Haven’t the most successful political leaders of the last 20 years been experienced, practiced politicians? What evidence is there that outsiders or unconventional politicians can succeed? What does this tell us about politics? Should we, perhaps, view politics as we do any other profession: something at which you must be experienced in to succeed?

3:18pm. Here’s one request I’d make: If you enter a party leadership race as a relative long shot, bring some unique angle to the race. Call it the Ron Paul Rule (or the Rick Santorum Rule, or maybe the Nathan Cullen Rule). Joyce Murray is sort of doing this with electoral cooperation and Martha Hall Findlay is kind of doing this with supply management. But you should have either a particular ideology or a set of really bold policy proposals.

3:24pm. Martha Hall Findlay defends ending supply management. This is a fun debate. Ms. Hall Findlay is smart to make it about the cost of food for families.

3:33pm. Ms. Hall Findlay says the Liberals should have done a better job standing up to the government’s crime bills in the last two parliaments. The party needs more courage. Fair enough. Where was that courage at the time?

3:36pm. George Takach describes him as the “tech candidate.” I’m not sure that meets the Ron Paul Rule. Unless Mr. Takach’s answer to every dilemma is computers. (Although that would be interesting.)

3:39pm. Mr. Takach really wants to fight somebody.

3:44pm. Mr. Takach, answering a question about supply management, “And I will weave in my modest upbringing.” Very meta.

3:46pm. Closing statements. No lectern and all the candidates are on the stage at the same time. Ms. Murray pitches cooperation and picks up on Ms. Coyne’s Groundhog Day analogy. Mr. Trudeau pitches his democratic reforms. Mr. Garneau says the Liberal leader needs to be clear and specific about what he or she wants to do (subtext: Mr. Trudeau isn’t being clear enough about what he would do and where he stands). Ms. Hall Findlay says she’s pretty good with substantive policy and that this is about substance, experience and intelligence and tough decisions and courage and that there are no silver bullets (subtext: Mr. Trudeau is the silver bullet I’m contrasting myself with). Mr. Takach criticizes Mr. Locke for not asking enough questions about the economy.

4:01pm. And that’s that. This changes… probably not much. My general take on this race remains the same as it was two weeks ago.

]]>An email from the Joyce Murray campaign yesterday: Ms. Murray is pleased with the latest endorsement of a one-time electoral pact.

The Pundits Agree: Cooperation Only Way To Defeat Harper

For several months, Joyce has been traveling across the country talking to Canadians about her plan for political cooperation to defeat Stephen Harper in the next election. Joyce believes that must be the #1 priority of the millions of Canadians who agree that the Harper government is bad for progress, bad for equality and bad for Canada.

Her plan is simple: a one-off approach to cooperation with national progressive parties in ridings in the next election where Stephen Harper’s candidate failed to win 50% support. But she will leave the ultimate decision to members and supporters at the riding level, not a top-down directive.

Her plan has been making headlines across the country and was front and centre at the Vancouver debate last weekend. It is bold and it is clear – two things Liberals know we need to be again.

But here’s the blunt and simple point: Joyce Murray is the only candidate for the Leadership of the Liberal Party with a plan to defeat Harper in the next election.

The National Post’s Andrew Coyne backed her plan in a column on the need for political cooperation and democratic reform. Like Joyce, he thinks cooperation is one of the best ways to defeat Harper.

Take a read of Andrew’s column and if you agree, come join the campaign and support Joyce’s plan.

This is our opportunity to change the political landscape in Canada; don’t miss out.

Jamie

—

Jamie CarrollCampaign Chairman

I’m not sure Andrew and Ms. Murray are proposing quite the same thing though. Ms. Murray’s proposal doesn’t seem to include a particularly quick passing of electoral reform and then immediately calling a new election. In an interview with CP she suggests a blue ribbon panel or royal commission would study possible changes and then the public would be asked for input, possibly including a referendum. That’s not quite the same as turning the next election into a referendum on electoral reform and then calling a new election as quickly as possible.

From left to right, federal Liberal leadership candidates Justin Trudeau, Martin Cauchon, Karen McCrimmon, Joyce Murray, Martha Hall Findlay, George Takach, Deborah Coyne, David Bertschi and Marc Garne after the party's first leadership debate in Vancouver, B.C., on January 20, 2013. (Darryl Dyck, THE CANADIAN PRESS)

Welcome to live coverage of the first Liberal leadership debate. The debate begins at 4 p.m. EST and can be streamed at CPAC.ca, Liberal.ca and CBC.ca. CPAC and CBC News Network are also carrying the proceedings on television.

We’ll commence the live blog shortly. Hit refresh for the latest updates.

3:49pm. The theme of this debate is “Can anyone here pierce the aura of invincibility that surrounds Justin Trudeau?” The first round will focus on hair care. Officially, there will be opening statement, then two questions for all nine candidates, then 12 mini-debates among groups of three candidates and then closing statements.

3:52pm. Despite the fact that there are nine candidates, the Liberal party has apparently declined to use a Hollywood Squares setup.

3:56pm. Here are your official themes for the afternoon: aboriginal issues, the environment, social housing, Pacific Rim Trade and electoral cooperation and reform.

4:05pm. Legalized weed obviously gets the first applause of the afternoon.

4:10pm. Marc Garneau goes with a Kim Campbell joke. (The one about how she said an election wasn’t the time to discuss policy serious issues.) Probably gets his point across: He’s about policy, not nice hair. But Kim Campbell said that 20 years ago. Most of the NDP caucus wasn’t even in grade school when she made that gaffe. It’s time to get a new punchline.

4:15pm. Justin Trudeau does his Trudeau thing: staring into the nation’s soul, enthusing about the possibility of greatness and so forth.

4:19pm. There are four people on stage who ran for the Liberals in 2011 and lost. If you ran for the Liberals in 2011 and lost, there’s a 1.5 per cent chance that you’re a leadership candidate now.

4:24pm. Opening statements give way to a discussion of aboriginal issues. Time for collaboration and discussion and cooperation and leadership, everyone seems to agree. Martha Hall Findlay is really mad that Thomas Mulcair suggested that some progress had been made with last week’s meeting between the Prime Minister and First Nations. “The gaul!” she says. For that matter, if the NDP hadn’t helped defeat the Liberal government in 2004, the Kelowna Accord would’ve been implemented. Liberals love talking about the Kelowna Accord. New Democrats and Conservatives would probably love to talk about why the Liberal government fell in 2004.

4:37pm. Nobody but Joyce Murray wants to work with the NDP. She is the Liberal party’s Nathan Cullen. Well-positioned for a strong third-place finish. Karen McCrimmon argues that the best countries in the world have more than two parties. Risky move to openly disparage the United States and China like that.

4:42pm. Marc Garneau notes his ranked ballot proposal. Martha Hall Findlay endorses the idea. How about a coalition? Are any of these candidates willing to say they’d entertain the possibility of forming a coalition—either as the junior or senior partner—after the 2015 election?

4:46pm. With everyone but Ms. Murray having dismissed electoral cooperation with the New Democrats, an audience member asks how the Liberals might cooperate with the New Democrats in 2015 (because Mackenzie King did it once, apparently). Deborah Coyne allows for the possibility of post-election cooperation.

4:51pm. Martha Hall Findlay raises the example of Liberals voting for Joe Clark in Calgary in 2000 as an example of… something. The Liberals need their Joe Clark? Liberals need to be willing to vote for other parties?

4:53pm. On the issue of energy development and sustainability, Marc Garneau notes that he was an astronaut. David Bertschi and George Takach make fun of him. Mr. Takach refers to himself as “the tech candidate.” Mr. Garneau says he is also a tech candidate. Mr. Takach suggests that Mr. Garneau cannot be both the astronat and the tech candidate. That’s about the extent of the disagreement so far.

5:00pm. Joyce Murray shouts out a “price on carbon.”

5:06pm. A mini-debate on scrapping first-past-the-post. Karen McCrimmon wants to circulate petitions to determine what people want. I suspect this would result in the people demanding a Death Star.

5:09pm. Justin Trudeau wants a ranked ballot. Joyce Murray wants to cooperate with the NDP. Mr. Trudeau happily takes the opportunity to champion a principled Liberal party. Ms. Murray challenges him to demonstrate he has a plan to defeat Stephen Harper. Mr. Trudeau happily takes the opportunity to champion the Liberal party. Here’s my question: How do you cooperate with the NDP if the NDP doesn’t want to cooperate? Are you hoping that NDP riding associations will go maverick and dare Thomas Mulcair to stop them from cooperating with Liberals?

5:16pm. I think David Bertschi just took another shot at the fact that Marc Garneau was in space while Bertschi was doing stuff on earth. How big is the anti-space vote in the Liberal party? Is this an attempt to repeat the Conservative campaign against Michael Ignatieff?

5:24pm. Mr. Takach loves the Internet. He needs to go further with this. Replace the House of Commons with gchat. Reorient our military to cyber-warfare. Give every citizen an iPhone. Turn Manitoba into a cyberworld like Tron.

5:34pm. A three-person debate about living conditions for First Nations and social housing gives Marc Garneau, Justin Trudeau and Martha Hall Findlay a chance to perform directly beside each other. All three probably come away feeling fairly good about their 90 seconds. Give those three an hour on stage together and you might get a real debate (or the sort that could shake this race up a bit).

5:44pm. There’s obviously a good reason to avoid a divisive leadership race: you want to avoid splitting the party, you don’t want to give the Conservatives or New Democrats any fodder for future attacks (remember those Conservative ads with Michael Ignatieff telling Stephane Dion that the Liberals didn’t get it done?). But the conventional wisdom here is that there’s an obvious and clear frontrunner (Mr. Trudeau). So can the other candidates resist the urge to attack him? Can they afford to (if they truly think they have a chance of winning)? Do they just hope he self destructs with his own gaffes? One possible caveat: if, say, the Garneau campaign has some sense that on the ground Mr. Trudeau’s advantage isn’t as great as the conventional wisdom assumes and that, as a result, they can win without having to tear him down.

5:54pm. Joyce Murray shouts out marijuana. More applause. How does the Marijuana Party respond to this? Their central agenda has been completely hijacked by the Liberals. Do they move on to harder drugs? Do they present the Liberals with a proposal to run joint nomination meetings ahead of 2015?

5:57pm. A question about putting a price on carbon. Deborah Coyne says “carbon tax.” Justin Trudeau says a lot of nice words about the unfortunate tenor of political discourse, notes that the Conservatives have acknowledged the need to put a price on carbon, but he doesn’t commit to how he’d put a price on carbon. George Takach says lots of nice words about political centrism and says there are “at least five ways” to put a price on carbon, one of which presumably the Liberals would go with if he was leader. I dare say the Conservatives have successfully scared the crap out of some of their rivals on this file.

6:06pm. Closing statements and that’s that. All in all, it was… fine. Nine candidates squeezed into two hours doesn’t allow for much of a debate. Probably a good day for Justin Trudeau, who showed again what he has to offer as a public figure and wasn’t obviously taken down a peg by any of the other candidates, and Marc Garneau, who made a concerted effort to set himself up as the anti-Trudeau and might’ve succeeded. See this tweet and this tweet from John Geddes. (And then this tweet from Alice Funke.) Not sure the conventional wisdom on this race changes much after this, but Mr. Garneau has to hope that, at the very least, the narrative now makes him the obvious (if still distant) second place.

]]>OTTAWA – Federal Liberals long ago abandoned the cardinal rule of success handed down by late Grit rainmaker Keith Davey: “Revere the leader.”

As they prepare to choose their fourth leader (sixth, counting interim leaders) in nine years, Liberals seem poised to renounce the third of Davey’s Ten Commandments of Canadian Liberalism: “Stay on the road to reform; keep left of centre.”

With one lonely exception, the top tier of contenders for the Liberal helm has veered sharply to the right, much to the private consternation of some of the stalwarts of the party’s once-influential left wing.

“I don’t believe that the way you’re going to offer an alternative (to the Harper Conservatives) is to be a pseudo-Tory.”

Many Liberals and pundits had assumed Justin Trudeau, the prohibitive favourite, would represent the progressive wing of the party — assumptions based not so much on his relatively thin policy pronouncements as on his youth, mop of curly hair, penchant for wearing jeans and the legacy of his late father, former prime minister Pierre Trudeau.

But the Montreal MP has so far gone out of his way to foil expectations.

He’s called the now-defunct, Liberal-created long gun registry a failure and asserted that guns are an important part of Canada’s identity.

He’s come out strongly in favour of the takeover of Nexen Inc. by the Chinese state-owned oil company, even chiding Prime Minister Stephen Harper for not being open enough to investment by state-owned enterprises in the oilsands.

Two of Trudeau’s most serious challengers have similarly positioned themselves as so-called blue or business-friendly Liberals.

Montreal MP Marc Garneau, Canada’s first astronaut, has called for wide open competition in the telecommunications sector. And he’s lamented government interference in free markets when it comes to encouraging innovation.

“Instead of more government handouts, let’s eliminate all capital gains tax on investment in Canadian start-ups,” he told a Toronto business audience in a recent speech larded with conservative catchphrases.

“A government official should not be making the decision where to invest. It’s the experts — you — the innovators themselves that know best.”

Former Toronto MP Martha Hall Findlay touts her experience as a businesswoman and has called for an end to supply management of dairy products. With her campaign based in Calgary, she’s strongly supported Alberta’s oilsands and two proposed pipelines to carry oilsands bitumen to ports on British Columbia’s coast.

Among the top tier contenders, so far only Vancouver MP Joyce Murray has staked out turf on the left. She’s an ardent environmentalist, favours a carbon tax, opposes pipelines through B.C. and supports full legalization of marijuana. She also advocates co-operation with the NDP and Greens in the next election in ridings where a united progressive front could defeat the Conservatives.

Not surprisingly, all four balk at being pegged on the right or left of the political spectrum, a categorization they dismiss as outdated and meaningless to voters.

Hall Findlay, for instance, says her policies are based on evidence, “not on some outdated view of what is ‘right’ or ‘left’ or even some undefined ‘centre.'”

For his part, Garneau places himself dead centre between the Conservatives and the NDP.

“I am a Liberal,” he says.

“Rather than the stark choices we face today — a choice between a party that believes in less government and a party that believes in more government — I believe in innovative, responsive, smart government.”

Nevertheless, the pronounced rightward tilt of the race so far has prompted former veteran minister Lloyd Axworthy, the leading spear carrier for the party’s progressive wing for decades, to line up behind Murray.

Now president of the University of Winnipeg, Axworthy has to be discreet about politics these days. But he allowed in an interview that he is “impressed” with Murray and the values she espouses.

Murray may yet have company on the left. One-time minister Martin Cauchon is seriously pondering a late entry into the race, evidently sensing an opening for another progressive voice.

Cauchon has blasted Trudeau for calling the gun registry a failed policy, saying leadership candidates “should have the backbone to respect and stand for the principles that we have always stood for.”

And in a recent speech, delivered in Berlin but circulated at home, he extolled the “moderate” policies pursued by past Liberal prime ministers, including an emphasis on peacekeeping, Canada’s role as a “soft power,” and his own role in spearheading the move to legalize same-sex marriage.

There has always been creative tension between the left and right flanks of the party, which has been most successful when the two are in balance. As long-shot contender George Takach puts it, a bird “needs both wings to fly.”

Jean Chretien led the party to three consecutive majorities by flapping both wings. He eliminated the deficit and slashed taxes, while legalizing gay marriage, introducing legislation to decriminalize marijuana, signing on to the Kyoto climate change treaty and creating the gun registry.

So why would leadership contenders abandon that winning formula?

Trudeau’s perceived rightward tilt is not ideological, one of his strategists says. Rather, it’s the result of aiming himself squarely at middle-class Canadians, who tend to be conservative on economic matters.

At the same time, defying expectations by disowning the gun registry or his father’s hated National Energy Program reflects Trudeau’s belief that the party can not rebuild by holding fast to sacred cows from decades gone by.

“What we want to do is clear the decks so we can build a new platform from scratch,” the strategist says.

Stephen Carter, Hall Findlay’s campaign manager and the architect of the come-from-behind victories of Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi and Alberta Premier Alison Redford, argues that the locus of Canadian politics has shifted — not left to right, but east to west as formerly Quebec-centric politicians come to grips with the economic power of the West.

Indeed, right-left labels no longer really apply, Carter maintains. Canadians, he argues, have become very fluid in their political beliefs, with little loyalty to any party. They traverse the political spectrum on an issue-by-issue basis and are not the least bothered if a leader does the same.

What they’re looking for, Carter believes, is an authentic leader who speaks his or her mind.

“The party brand is the leader. That’s it,” he says bluntly.

Still, the dwindling band of Liberal progressives worry about the perceived rightward drift. They fear the party risks losing its few remaining urban outposts in a misguided bid to appeal to disaffected Tory supporters.

“It doesn’t make sense to siphon off the 40 per cent that Stephen Harper has,” says a Murray organizer. “It makes more sense to go for the 60 per cent who don’t vote for Stephen Harper.”

]]>Liberals gathered at the Westin Hotel for their annual holiday party. Northern Ontario MP Bruce Hyer, who quit the NDP to sit as an Independent, was the date of Liberal leadership candidate and MP Joyce Murray.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/general/a-very-liberal-xmas-and-one-independent/feed/0Come togetherhttp://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/come-together/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/come-together/#commentsMon, 03 Dec 2012 18:15:02 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=322806Paul Adams commends Joyce Murray for advocating joint nominations among Liberals, New Democrats and Greens.There’s no doubt Murray is a long shot to win the leadership. And I understand …

There’s no doubt Murray is a long shot to win the leadership. And I understand that it is likely that the winner will denounce the idea of inter-party co-operation during the leadership campaign, just as Thomas Mulcair did with the NDP. But once the Liberal leadership is over, all the opposition parties will be staring a stark reality in the face. None of them is likely to win a majority in the next election unless they co-operate or merge. If one is lucky enough to win a minority, it will depend on other like-minded parties to pass its legislation and stay in power. Sooner or later, in other words, the current opposition parties likely will be driven to co-operate.

There will be a window after the Liberal leadership, whoever is elected, when it will be possible to explore possibilities like the one that Cullen and now Murray have proposed. It is worth remembering that the leaders of both the PCs and the Canadian Alliance rejected the idea of party merger when they were leadership candidates. But they changed their minds and persuaded their parties otherwise once they were elected. They did so because it made political sense. Of course, there is another possibility for the Liberals, the NDP and the Greens, perhaps the most probable of all: that they will once again compete with one another in the 2015 election, and in doing so allow the Conservatives to triumph as they have in 2006, 2008 and 2011 against a divided opposition. At that point, the impulse for co-operation likely will be irresistible, but too late to prevent yet another Conservative government advancing policies they all oppose.

There remai numerous questions to be answered about joint nominations. But there is one way joint nominations might make sense: if they were explicitly part of an outright merger. Thing is, Joyce Murray, like Nathan Cullen when he sought the NDP leadership, rejects a merger. And Ms. Murray says the joint nominations would only be for the next election.

There are a lot of reasons to prefer proportional representation — I’ve written about it often — but for the opposition parties there is one reason in particular: the current system heavily favours the Conservatives, as the party with the support of the largest single block of voters.So while I don’t see the case for merging the other parties, I do think there’s some merit in a proposal floated by the Liberal leadership candidate Joyce Murray: namely, a one-time-only electoral pact, for the sole purpose of changing the voting system. The Green Party has proposed something similar. And Nathan Cullen famously ran for NDP leader on an electoral cooperation platform. The details no doubt vary, but here’s how I can see it working. The opposition parties would agree on a single candidate to put up against the Conservatives in each riding. Were they to win a majority, they would pledge to govern just long enough to implement electoral reform: a year, two at most. Then fresh elections would be called under the new system, with each party once again running under its own flag, with a full slate of candidates.

Supporters of each party, therefore, would not have to give up their allegiance. Neither, for that matter, would reform-minded Conservatives. They could vote for the reform ticket this one time, then return to the Tory fold when it came to deciding who should represent them in a reformed Parliament.

I guess the theory is here at that the 2015 election could be an election about electoral reform. That strikes me as an odd notion. Are we going to suspend all other issues of consideration? Are the the Liberals, Greens and New Democrats going to put aside all other policy proposals? Are they going to promise, for the year or two it takes to implement reform, to not do anything else of consequence? Or are they going to have to agree on a unified platform? Could the general public be convinced to take electoral reform so seriously that all other policy issues would be secondary?

I also continue to find the idea of riding-level co-operation to be hopelessly problematic. To start, doesn’t the last federal election demonstrate the folly of trying to figure out ahead of time which party’s candidate has the best shot of winning? How many of the ridings that the NDP won for the first time in 2011 would have had a New Democrat candidate if a co-operation approach had been adopted two months before that election?

Alice Funke sees lots of practical issues. But how would this work politically? Having agreed to co-operate on nominating candidates, how tied to each other would the parties be? Could they still disagree amongst each other? Would they have to agree to refrain from attacking each other? Wouldn’t the Conservatives happily be able to exploit differences of opinion and attack the three as a united front—the NDP held responsible for any mistakes of the Liberals and vice versa? What if 200 Liberal candidates are nominated, but, mid-campaign, the Liberal leader is suddenly enveloped in some scandal?

On a local level, how sure are we that Liberal or Green voters will vote NDP or vice versa? What would be the impact locally in 2019 on a party not running a candidate in 2015? Wouldn’t sitting out a campaign in a given riding make it at least a little bit harder for a party to mount a campaign four years later?

As when Nathan Cullen proposed it, the idea still strikes me a too cute by half. I think people who want to see co-operation among the three non-Conservative parties might as well argue for a merger (though I don’t think that makes much sense right now) or the possibility of a coalition government. Joint nominations, in my mind, put you in no man’s land between those two ideas.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/gaming-the-system-2/feed/110In other newshttp://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/in-other-news-6/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/in-other-news-6/#commentsMon, 26 Nov 2012 17:02:30 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=319464Joyce Murray is the second Liberal MP to declare her candidacy for the Liberal leadership. And she seems to be borrowing Nathan Cullen’s idea of riding-level runoffs.Murray says she …

]]>Joyce Murray is the second Liberal MP to declare her candidacy for the Liberal leadership. And she seems to be borrowing Nathan Cullen’s idea of riding-level runoffs.

Murray says she believes Liberals, New Democrats and Greens should have the option of conducting run-off nominations to choose a single candidate in tightly contested ridings where a united progressive front would guarantee defeat of the ruling Tories … To make sure Harper is ejected from that seat, she said riding associations need to be able to co-operate with rivals. “There are some ridings where the vast majority of voters would like to have a progressive voice,” she said. “So, if a riding is willing to have a run-off (nomination) so that the progressive voice has a chance of becoming elected, then that’s something that I think is a good idea.”

Murray wouldn’t impose the idea; she’d ask Liberals to endorse it at their next convention, then leave it to local riding associations to decide whether to use it or not. It would be a one-time tactic only for the 2015 election. She stressed she is not proposing a merger with the NDP or any other party.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/in-other-news-6/feed/19The Commons: Happily outragedhttp://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/the-commons-happily-outraged/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/the-commons-happily-outraged/#commentsWed, 21 Nov 2012 23:03:29 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=317476The Scene. Oh how happy Conservatives must’ve been made last night to read the inflammatory remarks of Liberal MP David McGuinty. Oh how giddy they must’ve been at the prospect…

]]>The Scene. Oh how happy Conservatives must’ve been made last night to read the inflammatory remarks of Liberal MP David McGuinty. Oh how giddy they must’ve been at the prospect of hanging this one on the Liberal side. One presumes several backbenchers could barely sleep, so anxious to get on with today’s festival of shame.

So immensely outraged, in fact, that the Immigration Minister was sent out after the meeting of the Conservative caucus to specially address the matter. And no less than four Conservatives—each of them an Albertan who could claim a personal affront—were sent up before Question Period to variously fume.

“Our government strongly condemns the Liberal Party of Canada’s comments that say that Alberta MPs do not belong in Parliament and should go home,” Michelle Rempel proclaimed. “This anti-energy prejudice is the same the Liberals had when they brought in their disastrous national energy program in the 1980s, a program that damaged the economy and cost Albertans billions. This type of regionally divisive policy and rhetoric from the Liberal Party is unfathomable.”

“The Liberal Party may find it offensive to have Alberta’s interests defended on the floor of the House of Commons, but Albertans find it offensive when the Liberal Party tries to shut down their voices,” Chris Warkentin informed the House.

“Mr. Speaker, Albertans are rightfully appalled by the arrogant comments from the MP for Ottawa South,” Blaine Calkins reported.

“Mr. Speaker, as time passes people learn, grow and change. Unfortunately, even though time has passed, the Liberal Party has not learned a thing,” Blake Richards sighed from the back row with Ms. Rempel, Rona Ambrose and Devinder Shory positioned behind him.

If you didn’t know better, you’d think there might be a by-election in a few days. But understand that the Conservatives—whatever the smiles on the government side—do not lament for this lightly. Their tolerance for heated rhetoric is exceptionally high. Suggest someone sympathizes with the Taliban or imply that to disagree with a piece of legislation would put one in league with child pornographers and they will restrain themselves. Declare a policy to be “unCanadian” or venture that a proposal would “screw everybody” and they will shrug and accept that such is politics.

But here now they must draw the line. Here now they must take a stand. Or, rather, here is something they will not stand for.

Indeed, here was something from which they could not allow themselves to be distracted.

“While I am on my feet,” the Prime Minister segued, switching to English halfway through his third response to Bob Rae on the issue of prescription drug abuse, “I think it is incumbent upon me to raise the issue of statements made by another member in this House. I find it shameful, not surprising, but shameful, that 30 years after the National Energy Program, these anti-Alberta attitudes are still close to the surface in the Liberal Party.”

The Liberals howled for the Speaker to cut the Prime Minister off. The Conservatives stood to applaud when Mr. Harper was finished.

A short while later, Liberal MP Joyce Murray rose and suggested the government was undermining the tourism industry. Jason Kenney, his precise responsibility for tourism unclear, stood to respond. “Mr. Speaker, we are supporting, not undermining, tourism. But the Liberal Party is now undermining the unity of this country by attacking members of Parliament from Alberta for representing their constituents,” Mr. Kenney lectured.

The Immigration Minister received a standing ovation.

Stephane Dion asked about the processing of visas for people from Syria. Mr. Kenney took the opportunity to restate his disappointment en francais.

Lest there be any doubt about the minister’s feelings, Mr. Shory was sent up a few rounds later with the following query on government business. “Mr. Speaker, in the 1980s, the Trudeau Liberals brought in the National Energy Program that absolutely destroyed the economy and cost my constituents and Alberta families their jobs, their homes and billions of dollars,” the backbencher explained. “Comments yesterday by the senior Liberal spokesperson for natural resources show that the Liberals have not changed much since then. When will the Liberals understand that Alberta’s energy industry brings incredible prosperity and jobs right across the country?”

For the sake of obeying the standing orders, Mr. Shory added a question for the minister. “Can the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism update the House on our government’s commitment to Canada’s energy industry?” he asked.

Apparently unfamiliar with how Question Period is supposed to work, Mr. Kenney responded with a question for the Liberal corner. “We have a question for the Leader of the Liberal Party: When is he going to fire his critic for natural resources for having attacked the members of Parliament from Alberta for simply representing their constituents as they are expected to do?”

An answer to this was offered shortly after QP. Presumably the Conservatives will be happy to hear it. Or perhaps they will be sad to see Mr. McGuinty go.

Liberal MP Joyce Murray was giving the thumbs up as the U.S. election unfolded, with Washington and Colorado approving propositions to legalize the recreational use of marijuana. Murray, a former B.C. cabinet minister likely to enter the Liberal leadership race, says that while the party’s official position on pot is legalization, many in her caucus are not supportive. (Young Liberals successfully pushed for approval at recent conventions.) Liberal leadership front-runner Justin Trudeau had been against legalization, but now says, “I’ve certainly evolved from conversations with supporters and Liberals. I am fully a supporter of decriminalization. I think the time has come for that. I am actually very open to legalization and specifically tax and regulation the way they are calling it in the States. It’s something I am looking forward to having a lot of serious discussion about.” Still, Trudeau says smoking marijuana is part of a larger problem: “As a society we are trying to convince people to live healthier lives. Not smoke so much. Not drink so much. I am worried about the message we are sending in that sense.”

Obama and the three cookies

A huge “phew” was heard in Ottawa’s ByWard Market after Barack Obama was re-elected President. Obama made his first international visit to Ottawa in February 2009. He famously stopped in at the historic market, where he purchased three maple-leaf-shaped shortbread cookies from bakery Le Moulin de Provence. Since then, the demand for the cookies has been incredible. Shop owner Claude Bonnet says before the visit he maybe sold 800 a month. At the post-Obama peak, he was turning out 20,000. It is now steady at 5,000 a month. The “Obama cookies,” as they are now called, are made from one custom-made copper cookie cutter and each one is hand-painted with red icing. Several government agencies buy the cookies in bulk to take to the U.S. to promote Canadian tourism. The cookies can also be purchased with a metal container, which includes a Barack Obama coaster and comes in a box that says “Ottawa.”

Back in 2009, that Obama visit was a blessing for the shop. A local bus strike had hurt business dramatically. Afterwards, Bonnet had to hire more staff to meet demand. Bonnet never thought he would sell this many cookies in his life. But even if Mitt Romney had won, he claims he still would have kept making the Obama cookies and maintaining his photo shrine to the U.S. President. Says Bonnet: “He made history by being the first black President. This situation is special. He is something unique. It’s the first time we saw a U.S. President on the street here.” The cookies sell for $2.45 each—the same price Obama paid for them in 2009.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/general/cpac-at-20/feed/0Happy Canada Dayhttp://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/happy-canada-day/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/happy-canada-day/#commentsSun, 01 Jul 2012 15:26:29 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=271458Aaron Wherry on who said what on July 1

After the jump, a video from the Prime Minister and statements from Thomas Mulcair and Bob Rae.

Thomas Mulcair.

As Canadians from coast-to-coast-to-coast celebrate our great country’s 145th birthday, let us also celebrate the values for which Canada has become known around the world. Values like diversity, tolerance, respect and social justice that have made Canada a unique place where people from all over the world can come together and feel at home.

Whether you’re spending this day with family or friends, in a small rural town or in one of our great cities, remember that there is far more that unites us than divides us and, for that, we can all be very proud.

So, on behalf of my family, my team and New Democrats across this country, I wish you and your family a happy Canada Day!

Bob Rae.

Canadians from coast to coast to coast are joined in celebration of Canada’s 145thbirthday. Today we reflect on what it means to be a citizen of Canada, its many achievements and its proud place in the world.

Among many other things, being Canadian means being boldly hopeful. Being Canadian means knowing we live in a country built on the foundational beliefs of openness, equality of opportunity and respect for diversity. Being Canadian means that the prosperity we create is a prosperity that is deeply and widely shared across this country.

Canada is the country of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Canada is a country of fierce, rugged and stunning natural landscapes unmatched anywhere else in the world. Canada is a country of industriousness and of a distinguished and influential culture. Canada is our home, and with all it has to give we cannot help but be proud. On this day we celebrate all Canada is and all it has to offer.

On behalf of the Liberal Party of Canada and our Parliamentary Caucus I wish everyone a happy Canada Day.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/happy-canada-day/feed/12Mitchel Raphael on the Frum family and an MP’s rapper-actor sonhttp://www.macleans.ca/general/mitchel-raphael-on-the-frum-family-and-an-mps-rapper-actor-son/
http://www.macleans.ca/general/mitchel-raphael-on-the-frum-family-and-an-mps-rapper-actor-son/#commentsFri, 25 May 2012 21:07:01 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=260514Frum gets a conservative welcome, and Joyce Murray's son is up for a Drama Desk Award

Sen. Linda Frum held a special reception on the Hill for her brother David Frum, a journalist, writer and former speechwriter for George W. Bush. The occasion was the launch of his first novel, Patriots, the story of an aide who works for a distinguished U.S. senator. The book is dedicated to his sister. One PMO staffer noted that the man shown on the cover looks a lot like Anthony Weiner, the former congressman who tweeted body pictures that reflected his last name. Conservative Sen. Nicole Eaton told Frum his book had been recommended to her by several people “who couldn’t put it down.” When Frum introduced her brother she joked it was “nice for my brother to be in a town where he is still a conservative.” David Frum’s criticisms of the Republican party have made for a “difficult time,” she said. “There have been some tensions.” One of his most honest critics has been his wife, Danielle Crittenden. She adores this book but Frum told of how harsh she’s been on others, especially the first draft of The Right Man: The Surprise Presidency of George W. Bush. Crittenden said of the draft: “Is it too late to give the advance money back?” At the launch of this book, Crittenden spoke of the sex scenes in Patriots. She said one friend described reading the sex scenes, because he knew the author well, as “like watching your father dance.” Among the many senators and staffers in attendance was Stephen Harper’s principal secretary Ray Novak, a man rarely spotted on the Ottawa social circuit. Frum signed several books while standing and at one point needed to put down his glass down. Instead Senate Speaker Noël Kinsella was happy to bear his cup. “You learn to not grow attached to any of this stuff,” said Kinsella of his important position.

MP guarantees best lullabies

Ontario Conservative MP Terence Young is expecting his first grandchild on June 6. Neighbours have already loaned Young a crib and playpen so the baby can stay at their place. Young’s daughter, Madeline Hubbard, is having a girl, so the excited grandfather has already purchased many articles of pink clothing. Young says his granddaughter will get the best lullabies. Hubbard is the artistic director of the Opera Jeunesse Music & Theatre Academy. Young says his whole family is musical. The MP, along with his four brothers, all sang in their father’s church choir. His father, George Young, was a rector at St. Anne’s Anglican Church in Toronto, which is famous for murals painted by three members of the Group of Seven: J.E.H. MacDonald, F.H. Varley and Frank Carmichael. Young’s brother Scot Denton was in several rock bands and currently teaches acting at Sheridan College in Oakville, Ont. Surprisingly, Young says he has not been tapped to lead O Canada when it is sung in the House each Wednesday. Often parties try to find more musically inclined members like the NDP’s Charlie Angus, a two-time Juno Award nominee, to start the national anthem.

MP’s rapping son

Liberal MP Joyce Murray will be in New York on June 3 for a special theatre awards ceremony. Her son, rap artist Baba Brinkman, is up for a Drama Desk Award in the category of outstanding solo performance for his one-man off-Broadway production The Rap Guide to Evolution. The Drama Desk Awards pit Broadway, off-Broadway and off-off Broadway plays against each other and votes are cast by members of the media. They are like the Golden Globes before the Oscars. Aside from performing the show in New York, Brinkman has also done it for medical conferences as well as at a military base. The production’s website notes his “project owes its origins to the geneticist Dr. Mark Pallen, who specially requested ‘a rap version of the Origin of Species’ for Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday in 2009.”

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/general/mitchel-raphael-on-the-frum-family-and-an-mps-rapper-actor-son/feed/0The question of the weekendhttp://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/the-question-of-the-weekend/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/the-question-of-the-weekend/#commentsSat, 14 Jan 2012 21:37:15 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=233836Liberals are spending much of the day discussing the concept of “evidence-based policy”—this curious and revolutionary and courageous notion that the government’s actions and promises should acknowledge demonstrable reality. Munir…

]]>Liberals are spending much of the day discussing the concept of “evidence-based policy”—this curious and revolutionary and courageous notion that the government’s actions and promises should acknowledge demonstrable reality. Munir Sheikh, the former chief statistician, addressed the convention this morning. Delegates have spent the rest of the day in sessions dedicated to discussing this novel approach in the context of various policy areas.

The answer is: almost. But with a few minutes to spare in the hour a young man from the riding of Mount Royal stood and put the Liberal soul up for discussion.

“I have one question,” he said, proceeding to table it in rapid and insistent fashion. “Considering that most parts of Europe use a carbon tax and Australia is developing a carbon tax and so is China and so is India and so is many other parts of the world, and only Canada, with the exception of course of Quebec and British Columbia that have a carbon tax, and considering that many states and many countries that have a carbon tax have been able to grow economically even though they have it, does this not show merit for adopting a carbon tax?”

He added his concern that despite the issue being discussed, not a single person on the stage at the front of the room was using a reusable water bottle.

Seated on stage were environmental Steven Guilbeault, scientist Gordon McBean and two Liberal MPs, Joyce Murray and Kirsty Duncan. Another Liberal MP, Pablo Rodriguez, stood to moderate. It was Mr. McBean who offered a response.

“Let me just say that it is the opinion of almost every leading economist in the world dealing with the climate change issue and related issues that a carbon tax is by far the most economically and administratively efficient way of dealing with the issue,” he said. “We should have a carbon tax in Canada. In my view.”

The Scene. Turning to the English portion of her remarks, Nycole Turmel attempted to round on the Prime Minister.

“The Conservatives are turning their backs on the world. The Conservatives are betraying future generations. They have set up bogus homemade targets and are not even a quarter of the way toward meeting this lame attempt at saving face,” she ventured in her particular way. “When will the Prime Minister take climate change seriously?”

This question was almost entirely rhetorical and almost definitely futile, but it was almost surely the query the NDP wanted on the evening news—a furious condemnation wrapped in a plaintive cry.

The Prime Minister was quite happy for the opportunity to stand and speak seriously.

“Mr. Speaker, in terms of climate change, we are pursuing policies domestically, nationally and internationally. We are working for the creation of an international protocol that will include all major emitters,” he declared. “What this government does not favour, what this government has never favoured and has been very clear on is we do not agree with a protocol that only controls a little bit of global emissions, not enough to actually make any difference but enough to transfer Canadian jobs overseas. We will never agree to that.”

Therein surely lies something like the truth of the matter. However much confronting climate change might result in companies relocating their operations elsewhere, it is, in the shorthand of the moment, “jobs” that matter right now. As Michelle Rempel explained to Joyce Murray yesterday, “With regard to the fossil of the year award, the member opposite should know that the real award that counts is that our country sits on top of the G7 with regard to economic growth and job creation.” So there and so true. And so conceivably, just as soon as every working-age individual is in possession of guaranteed employment, income and welfare, and as soon as every nation in the world is committed to an agreement that does not threaten those guarantees, will we be prepared to do something about this matter of climate change.

Until then, there is not much to discuss. And so, setting aside tomorrow’s problems, the House turned to yesteryear’s pronouncements and debates.

“I would like to ask the Prime Minister,” Mr. Rae continued by way of summation, “is that still the position that the Prime Minister of Canada holds about the issue of climate change?”

Mr. Harper stood and ducked. “Mr. Speaker, I do not pretend to be a scientist on these issues, and I hope neither does the leader of the Liberal Party,” he said.

The Prime Minister wanted instead to talk about another yesterday. “I will say this, what made absolutely no sense for this country was a Liberal government that signed the Kyoto protocols, signed what I quite frankly think were stupid targets and then had no plan after 10 years in office to even implement those,” he snapped. “That was irresponsible, and this government is making sure we have a responsible position for this country.”

Mr. Rae was unimpressed.

“Mr. Speaker, I asked a very simple and very direct question to the Prime Minister of Canada on climate change and scientific evidence in this regard,” he lamented, palms turned upward. “I asked a simple question and the Prime Minister of Canada, our dear country, refused to answer.”

Mr. Harper stood again. “Mr. Speaker,” he said, “I have said repeatedly that climate change is a big problem for the world.”

Well, sort of. The Prime Minister actually once ventured that climate change was “perhaps the biggest threat to confront the future of humanity today.” And maybe it still is. But it remains something for tomorrow.

The Stats. The environment, nine questions. Firearms, six questions. Aboriginal affairs, four questions. The economy, health care and ethics, three questions each. Fisheries, democratic representation, foreign investment and military procurement, two questions each. Poland, citizenship and infrastructure, one question each.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/the-commons-tomorrows-problem/feed/75Drag queens, MPs and a Liberal fundraiserhttp://www.macleans.ca/general/drag-queens-mps-and-a-liberal-fundraiser/
http://www.macleans.ca/general/drag-queens-mps-and-a-liberal-fundraiser/#commentsFri, 08 Apr 2011 01:25:20 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=182717Liberal MP Hedy Fry squeezed in a fundraiser to help with the debt she incurred from her leadership run in 2006. The event was held at Ottawa’s hot new gay…

]]>Liberal MP Hedy Fry squeezed in a fundraiser to help with the debt she incurred from her leadership run in 2006. The event was held at Ottawa’s hot new gay bar Flamingo. Below, Fry and Bob Rae do a tribute to Sonny and Cher.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/general/special-olympics-canada-on-the-hill/feed/4For the recordhttp://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/for-the-record-3/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/for-the-record-3/#commentsMon, 13 Sep 2010 17:54:34 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=146984There is apparently some confusion over Bob Rae’s position on federal funding for a hockey arena in Quebec City, so here apparently is his position.I urged caution. I never …

]]>There is apparently some confusion over Bob Rae’s position on federal funding for a hockey arena in Quebec City, so here apparently is his position.

I urged caution. I never spoke to Sun media. I said Harper needed to understand that this is not a “one off” decision. You can’t just dole out money to a commercial arena in Quebec without understanding the implications for the rest of the country.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/for-the-record-3/feed/0MPs taste wine!http://www.macleans.ca/general/mps-taste-wine/
http://www.macleans.ca/general/mps-taste-wine/#commentsFri, 11 Jun 2010 20:30:10 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=132795The Canadian Vintners Association was on the Hill to allow MPs to sample some wine. There were wines from Quebec, Ontario, British Columbia, and one table from Nova Scotia. Below, …

]]>The Canadian Vintners Association was on the Hill to allow MPs to sample some wine. There were wines from Quebec, Ontario, British Columbia, and one table from Nova Scotia. Below, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson (right).

]]>The Scene. It was a full 25 questions today before anyone referred to Helena Guergis, before any of Pat Martin or John Baird or, sometime later, Marlene Jennings got involved. And then, yes, there was a reference, from the aforementioned Mr. Martin, to crucifixion. But that there had been a full 25 questions before we came to this point, surely counts for something.

This was indeed, in various small ways, a remarkable day. Daniel Paille and Jim Flaherty entertainingly sparred over securities regulation. Mr. Flaherty and John McCallum very nearly yelled each other hoarse over taxation policy. There were two questions about the potential for train traffic through downtown Toronto.

That it all began with David McGuinty, the booming Liberal backbencher, might not have particularly bode well. But then he seemed to have a question of some relevance.

He wanted specifically to know about the nation’s oil drilling regulations and whether we were sufficiently prepared to deal with the sort of disaster now making a mess of the Gulf of Mexico. For whatever reason, the Prime Minister didn’t feel like taking this one, so he passed to Environment Minister Jim Prentice. Mr. Prentice stood and assured Mr. McGuinty that everything was quite all right. Mr. McGuinty was unconvinced.

“Mr. Speaker, in December offshore drilling regulations were deliberately weakened to allow oil companies to set their own environmental protection goals and safety standards,” he shot back.

The Conservative side did not like this much and groaned.

“In contrast to the United States, using a strict and prescriptive approach for every offshore platform, these Conservatives do not even require safety valves and blow-up preventers,” Mr. McGuinty continued. “What this really means is that the Conservatives are asking industry to put the public interest ahead of their self-interest and shareholder profits. Will the government reinstate tough regulations that hold oil companies to the highest standards or not?”

Mr. Prentice then passed to Natural Resources Minister Christian Paradis, who similarly attempted reassurance. “Mr. Speaker, nothing is further from the truth. Canadian regulations require companies to prove they can operate safely in specific situations using the most advanced technology tailored to their circumstances,” he said. “We have stringent regulations that put the onus on industry to prove to regulators that they can protect their workers, the public and the environment. No drilling will proceed unless the government is convinced. Canadians expect nothing less.”

Larry Bagnell, the Liberal for Yukon, expected more. “Mr. Speaker, instead of reading his notes why did the minister not explain why the government weakened the requirements?” he sniped.

The Conservatives then howled as Mr. Bagnell proceeded to read from his own notes. And then Mr. Paradis mocked Mr. Bagnell for reading his notes instead of listening. And then the Liberals mocked Mr. Paradis for, once more, turning to his script.

The day did not then, though, spin out of control. Liberal Joyce Murray asked about a moratorium on oil tanker traffic off the B.C. coast. Liberal Gerry Byrne asked about the possibility of disaster and the government’s ability to respond. And then, after an interlude to debate the feasibility of a national securities regulator, Jack Layton picked up the oil inquiry with a series of questions about what the Prime Minister had done since the Gulf of Mexico spill to ensure Canada was sufficiently safeguarded.

Asked in French, the Prime Minister began his response en francais, but then switched to English, apparently to swing back in the opposition’s general direction.

“Quite frankly,” he testified, “I am shocked to hear some of the opposition members suggesting we would copy American regulations.”

Jack Layton was now compelled to yell back, his voice even cracking in the ensuing excitement. “Let us look at the National Energy Board for a minute,” he offered, waving his right hand all about. “This is an industry-friendly body that very recently gave in to pressure from the big oil companies to relax the regulations, to loosen the regulations on drilling in the Beaufort Sea. So that essentially the companies now get to decide what technologies they use, what systems they bring forward, what plans that they have. There is no regulation of any serious nature left. Can the Prime Minister explain to Canadians what the Conservatives are going to toughen up the rules, not loosen them?”

Now over to Mr. Harper, raising his voice and jabbing his finger and attempting to approximate besmirchment. “Mr. Speaker, once again, I am fascinated that a series of disgraceful events in the United States are used as a platform to attack a Canadian regulator,” he moaned. “A Canadian regulator which has an excellent record. A Canadian regulator which responds to these situations, which will continue to improve the situation here in Canada. We are very proud of the job that our regulator and that this country is doing. We have nothing to learn from the United States.”

Now Mr. Layton was waving both hands and demanding to know how we could know that a project off the coast of Newfoundland was sufficiently safe and then Mr. Harper was lamenting all of these attacks on Canada’s good name.

And indeed there was great sound and fury, but at least the noise seemed directed in someway. At least we were yelling about something.

]]>After all that, he’s not sharing
Kenzie Potter, director of parliamentary affairs in government House leader Jay Hill’s office, desperately needed to get her hands on some Stawnichy sausages. They’re made in Mundare, Alta., 75 km east of Edmonton. She wanted to surprise her father, Dale Potter, a former Edmonton Eskimo who, in his 12-year career, helped the team win six Grey Cups. Her father, now living in Ottawa, hadn’t had a Stawnichy sausage in years and was craving them. She thought it would be the ideal birthday present and asked Labour Minister Rona Ambrose, who’s from Edmonton, for help. Ambrose wasn’t going to be in Edmonton but agreed to do what she could. She tried to have the sausages sent by mail but the shop said it couldn’t do that. Could they freeze the sausages, Ambrose asked, and she would have someone pick them up and fly them to Ottawa. For that, she was told, she would need special permission from the manager: Stawnichy rarely freezes its sausages for fear it will affect the taste. She got the special permission, but then she needed to find someone to bring the sausages back. She started asking her fellow Edmonton MP colleagues. Mike Lake wasn’t sure he had room in his freezer to store them but MP Brent Rathgeber came to the rescue. Ambrose’s assistant’s husband picked up the sausages, gave them to his wife, who went and hung the bag on Rathgeber’s mailbox. The MP took them to the Edmonton airport, where they caught the attention of the security people when they went through the scanners. “We’ll have to look at your sausage,” he was told. (Apparently sausages have been used for transporting contraband.) After arriving safely in Ottawa, the sausages were presented to Kenzie Potter at the Conservatives’ question period prep. She took them over to the Senate, where her mother, Jan Potter, is the mace bearer. When Dale Potter got his present, he yelled with joy: “Where did you get this?” That was rapidly followed by: “I am not sharing these with anyone.”

Olympic crash pads
The parliamentary tourism caucus held a special reception as part of a themed afternoon of “Promoting Regional Tourism: Canada’s 2010 Winter Olympics & Paralympic Games.” At the gathering, Taleeb Noormohamed, VANOC’s vice-president of partnerships, said the city is short on hotel rooms, although he feels some places are holding rooms to rent at the last minute. But a few B.C. MPs told Capital Diary they still have space. Conservative Alice Wong has two rooms free; so does NDPer Libby Davies. Liberal Joyce Murray has set aside one room for Jeanne Dion, daughter of Stéphane Dion, but still has a room free and an apartment in the house she just renovated. Liberal Ujjal Dosanjh can’t help, though: his house is being renovated during the Olympics.

Hot Hill Xmas gift
For parliamentary procedure geeks, “it’s the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition,” quipped Liberal whip Rodger Cuzner at the launch of the second edition of House of Commons Procedure and Practice. New highlights include a section on warrants. “The last time [a Speaker] issued a warrant, they rode horses,” says Audrey O’Brien, the House clerk who co-edited the 1,400-plus-page book. She also says there is a revised section on Speakers dealing with tie votes, which Peter Milliken has done several times. Each MP received two copies of the book, which sells for $198.95 at the parliamentary gift shop, just in time for Christmas.

The next GG?
Mary Simon, president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, kicked off the organization’s launch of “2010: Year of the Inuit” on the Hill. One powerful Conservative insider told Capital Diary that Simon, a former ambassador and champion of the Arctic, would be an ideal choice as governor general since Michaëlle Jean is technically in her final year of office.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/general/mitchel-raphael-on-the-great-sausage-caper-and-a-present-for-parliamentary-geeks/feed/7Do the shufflehttp://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/do-the-shuffle/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/do-the-shuffle/#commentsTue, 06 Oct 2009 14:18:54 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=85776Four Liberals (Dhalla, Wrzesnewskyj, Silva and Wilfert) get advisory roles for various regions of the world, four new critic portfolios are created and various spots in the shadow cabinet are…

]]>Four Liberals (Dhalla, Wrzesnewskyj, Silva and Wilfert) get advisory roles for various regions of the world, four new critic portfolios are created and various spots in the shadow cabinet are distributed as follows:

]]>Speaker Peter Milliken held a special reception for the group Buy-A-Net. This Kingston, Ont.-based organization raises money to purchase insecticide-treated bed nets and anti-malaria medicine for Ugandan villages.

Winnipeg NDP MP Judy Wasylycia-Leis.

The Speaker (right) and His Excellency George Marino Abola High Commissioner-designate for the Republic of Uganda.

Bloc MPs Christiane Gagnon (left) and Johanne Deschamps.

Vancouver Liberal MP Joyce Murray.

Ontario NDP MP David Christopherson (right).

The Kingston Town Crier and Alberta Tory MP Ted Menzies.

Edmonton NDP MP Linda Duncan.

Artist Heather Haynes (left), whose work was on display at the reception, and Debra Lefebvre, founder of Buy-A-Net.